| reply to woody7
Re: umm it's their network said by woody7:
I might be wrong, but didn't a lot of these providers get easements from municipalities etc?
Good point. At least with cable providers, depending on the nuances of the contract, the muni could apply heat to the incumbent cable provider if they threaten other network-services companies like un-affiliated VoIP providers, by threatening to revoke their charter. Which, in most cases, would leave the actual physical-plant infrastructure in place, because it would be too costly for the cable co to rip it up again, and the muni could simply deny them the necessarily permits for ripping up the public streets to do so.
Then the muni just needs to add their own necessarily head-end/NOC infrastructure after the incumbent cable co. is gone from the scene. Possibly no cable-tv, but as far as broadband, such a system should be much cheaper, without the cable co's price-gouging. As an added bonus, all of the extra available bandwidth from the unused cable-tv channel freqs could be used to provide much higher-speed internet access than the network supported previously.
The big question in that situation is obviously efficient management and maintenance by the muni, and if they don't have the local skills to do so, how much will it cost them to out-source them. |
